Freedom-Two Baptist Views (Part 2)

Walter B. Shurden, a cautious critic of the Manifesto, in his The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms gives voice to what is arguable a wide-spread perspective among Baptists. He bases his findings on Baptist World Alliance sermons from 1905 to 1980. These four freedoms he labels "Bible freedom," "soul freedom," "church freedom," and "religious freedom."

Bible freedom he defines as the centrality of scripture in the life of Christians, which they "are both free and obligated to study and obey." Soul freedom is "the inalienable right and responsibility of every person to deal with God without the imposition of creed, the interference of clergy, or the intervention of civil government." Church freedom is the recognition of local congregational polity free "to participate within the larger Body of Christ," while religious freedom is the political stance that "Caesar is not Christ and Christ not Caesar" (4-5).

Shurden is careful to stress that these freedoms have their corresponding responsibilities--Bible freedom must involve submission to the control of scripture; soul freedom or competency demands individual responsibility and conscience; church freedom calls for an end to tribalism and for an open ecumenism, and religious freedom includes calling the state to account for its injustices (56-57). Likewise, Shurden stresses that Baptists are not a "creedal people," even while praising the "classical creedal statements" and "faith of the ecumenical church" (14-15), soul competency has at its heart a personal response of each believer to Christ (26-28), and the congregational government should lead to creative worship and responsible ministry (39-43).

Yet, despite this admirable balance, Shurden does make statements that cause the more community-minded Baptist to shutter: "[S]alvation is not church by church, community by community, or nation by nation. It is lonely soul by lonely soul;" (26). Giving his rhetoric the benefit of the doubt, Shurden nonetheless limits the soteriology of scripture to something far more individualistic than a close reading of the corporate aspects of salvation will support. "Each individual, therefore, is competent under God to make moral, spiritual, and religious decisions" (24). "Freedom, experimental and individualistic by nature, is threatening to both sacramental and rationalistic understandings of the Christian concept of salvation" (57). It is this experimental and assumed competency that gives pause. Yet I wonder if he entirely means it. He is careful to stress that the individual is always in community, always accountable to community.